Byron's Shadow

by Jason Foss

  ‘I can’t go back there in any case; a spotty kid kept giving me strange looks.’

  Flint raised one eye from the book.

  ‘I didn’t ask him about it, I didn’t want to. There was something about him, he suspects something.’ She turned her head to see which part of the book Flint was looking at. ‘Byron Nichols was some sort of commando, helping the Greeks fight the Germans during the war.’

  Flint turned to the fly leaf. ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’, he read, ‘I was born in Arcadia.’

  ‘That title from a better man I stole.’ Lisa quoted, ‘Evelyn Waugh used the same motto for the first part of Brideshead Revisited. The two books must have come out about the same time.’

  ‘You did learn something at college, after all.’

  Flint cast his eyes over the introduction, written by an American journalist who had met Nichols during the war, then arranged for his journal to be published.

  ‘He really fancies himself, this Byron Nichols,’ Lisa continued, ‘talk about purple prose; glowing sunsets, glittering marble columns and wine-dark sea on every second page.’

  ‘Is there anything about Palaeokastro?’

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘But look at the dedication. Remember the statue in Anatoliko? Right on Doctor D.’s doorstep? You said something would bite me, and this bites me.’

  ‘Brilliant, Lisa, well done.’

  ‘Patronising chauvinist. Can you pay for these coffees?’

  A hundred drachma coin slid across the table towards her. ‘Here’s my contribution.’

  *

  The room smelt of trapped air and damp washing. Lisa allowed herself an ‘early night’ whilst Flint lay propped up in bed, devouring the book. Arcadian Commando was a heartfelt work, full of classical allusions and clumsy prose; too few jokes and too many bearded sheep-herders dispensing mountain philosophy. Flint was reminded of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the product of another Oxford scholar turned soldier.

  Byron Nichols had been a Classics Don recruited for the British Mission to Greece. His own wartime exploits were mentioned in passing but it was upon the life and character of the mountain people that the author concentrated his effort. Hemmingway might have turned it into a classic, but Nichols probably saw no more than a few dozen copies of his book in print. Flint grappled with the myriad of abbreviations (ELAS, EAM, EDES etcetera), made brief notes on names, dates and places, but there was no Palaeokastro. Nauplion featured twice, Argos rather more, but the action was firmly set in the Arcadian mountains.

  The Italians and Germans had invaded Greece in 1940, but it wasn’t until 1943 that Nichols parachuted into the Peloponnesse. He had blown up a series of bridges with the aid of Stylanos Boukaris and a rabble of nationalist EDES partisans, then spent a year being hunted in the hills until ‘Operation Noah’s Ark’ chased the Germans from the country. Stylanos had apparently had his shin shattered by a German bullet during the retreat; a captured Italian medical team had performed an amputation without anaesthetic. For much of the time Nichols seemed to be sorting out squabbles between the rival guerrilla factions who expended more of their ammunition on fellow Greeks than they did on the Germans.

  The book closed with Nichols’ reflective entry into liberated Athens in 1944. In the past week Flint had skimmed through three such accounts of the mountain war and other than its author’s name, this offered nothing more than the others. As ever he was impressed by the strength of the common people and depressed by the stupidity of politicians.

  He looked hard at the faded grey cover, knowing the American Institute was now barred to them. When he had received strange looks at The British School, he had explained it by his increasingly dishevelled appearance and increasingly obscure requests. Lisa was more streetwise and had her full wardrobe available; she had not been imagining things. He wondered about the pleasant student who worked on the desk at the German School — what was her name? Katrina? She had seemed inquisitive that last afternoon; too inquisitive.

  He glanced at Lisa, half-covered by a sheet, naked and dozing in the bed. It was a quarter to one, he noticed, but his brain was too over-stimulated for sleep. Stepping out of bed, he put down Arcadian Commando and grabbed at his bulging file of offbeat ideas, flicking through it with edgy impatience.

  Flint went back to the book, searching for a point around page eighty. Captain Nichols and his EDES men were playing cat-and-mouse with supposedly allied communist guerrillas of ELAS. Young Vassilis, son of the guerilla leader, was hit in the head by shrapnel from a mortar explosion.

  ‘At first we gave him up for dead and despaired, but then a pulse was found. Although nearly scalped, Vassilis was alive and could be evacuated to the cave where I had endeavoured to establish our doctor. Thus I was saved the trauma of informing my greatest friend of the death of his son.’

  Vassilis had survived the war and clearly thrived on his father’s status as local hero. Indiscriminate shrapnel had clearly left his sharp lawyer’s mind intact; Vassilis Boukaris would be the one to ask about Byron Nichols — if he truly was his father’s ‘greatest friend’.

  No, he was unsure how close Vassilis was to Doctor Dracopoulos.

  ‘Doctor!’ he exclaimed.

  Lisa stirred, ‘What?’

  He bounced onto the bed beside her and kissed the upturned cheek.

  ‘If Vassilis was old enough to fight for Stylanos, Doctor D. is old enough to have been their medic. I don’t know where this is leading, but I’m convinced we’re getting somewhere.’

  ‘Super. Wake me when we arrive.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lisa hummed to herself as she worked around the shelves of the Gennadeion Library. She had walked out on Flint, then walked straight back. A romantic aura carried her along like a newlywed. She had a home (a rented bedroom), a gentle lover (Flint), and an aim in life (keeping him out of jail). For the moment, she was the complete woman.

  Helena the librarian was a sweetie. Always smiling, always keen to help with the obscure request. She would hold back the fringe of her hair as she talked in whispers.

  ‘You wanted books on Christian martyrs?’ Helena asked.

  ‘No, the Second World War and the Civil War.’

  ‘That’s a little late for us; we have a great deal about the War of Independence and Lord Byron.’

  Wrong Byron, thought Lisa. ‘I’ll see anything you have about Palaeokastro, east of Nauplion.’

  ‘I would never have guessed so many people would be interested in such a small place.’

  That frisson came back to her. ‘So many?’

  ‘You, your English colleague.’

  ‘And?’

  Helena pushed back her hair on the left hand side and grimaced. ‘Oh, another man was here yesterday asking about Palaeokastro. He asked me out to dinner,’ a smile replaced the grimace. ‘I told him my husband would shoot us both.’

  ‘What man? What was he called?’

  The librarian sensed the sudden angst. ‘He didn’t tell me his name.’

  ‘Was he old, was he young?’

  ‘Young, or so.’ Helena waved her hands, ‘Greek, perhaps thirty-five, very handsome, very well educated. He wears the latest fashion, all very expensive. He has a white Citroën, one of those long, new ones.’

  He could not be a policeman, but was he a reporter? Lisa hated the other possibilities. ‘What did he want to know?’

  Helena sighed. ‘I knew I shouldn’t at the time, I’m sorry. I told him you were here looking for things connected with Palaeokastro. He was very persuasive, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, he kept twisting his words around, asking the same thing in different ways.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was time for some lies. Splendid, technicolour lies. ‘Please,’ Lisa said, ‘Please don’t mention us again. I can’t explain, it’s all to do with family, legal claims, inheritance, you know, it goes back a long way. Lawyers are involved…’

  That was an awfully disjointed piece of ru
bbish; Lisa tried to clear her thoughts. ‘If he comes back, just don’t mention we’ve been here. We’re going back to England in a day or two and he could spoil things.’

  ‘I knew,’ Helena shook her head, ‘I knew there was something odd about him. He reminded me of one of those American gangsters, he gave me the creeps.’

  ‘That’s him,’ Lisa said mechanically, wanting desperately to be elsewhere.

  She found a dark corner to read through her books, which proved a worthless occupation. The man had been a reporter, she convinced herself. He was following up the story from the inside pages of the English press. The walls seemed very close that afternoon, the bookshelves very high. Claustrophobia began to crowd her world again and she lost her newlywed’s glow.

  *

  Innoculation against the Greek bug was fading away and Athens was beginning to feel like home. It was clear he would soon be forced to leave, yet Flint fought against it. He walked the familiar streets around Omonia Square and nodded to faces who were becoming acquaintances, even neighbours. One or two would call out polite greetings and he responded with the odd phrases Lisa was teaching him. He could put ‘fifty words of Greek’ on his next CV.

  Crumpled but wily, the man at his barrow-stall pushed a Greek war medal into Flint’s hand, as he did every morning. Without embarrassment, the Englishman was able to decline the bargain with a smile. A smell of strong Greek coffee and just a hint of sewage drifted through the air of the narrow alleyway between two of the monotonous high-rise blocks. Above him, washing hung over the balconies and female voices called across from one building to the next. The noise of traffic faded to a background hum as he infused the detail of life around him.

  At the intersection of Gladstone and Kanigas Street is a diminutive square, free of cars and well explored for entrances, exits and sight-lines. Owlett was already sitting on a bench by the tiny fountain, pretending to read The Athens Times, but glancing about himself every few seconds. Flint slipped on his hat and glasses and scraped a knuckle across the new growth of stubble. The journalist seemed to notice him and stood to his feet.

  A bunch of Australians were devouring souvlaki outside a corner stall. Flint waited until they moved on, clearing his view along the street, then began to stroll up Kanigas Street with practised aimlessness.

  Owlett caught him up. ‘So you’re still a free man.’

  ‘I am that. I saw your piece in the paper.’

  ‘Ah, yes. They edited too heavily for my liking, but they pays the money, they makes the choice. What have you got for me this time?’

  ‘It’s more the other way around.’

  Owlett groaned, ‘Another bloody wild-goose chase.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your sodding story, it’s hard for us you know.’

  ‘Us?’ Owlett stopped walking.

  Flint had to think fast. ‘Northern turn of phrase; like “buy us a pint”.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Did you get any further with the Ministry people?’ Flint started to stroll once more.

  ‘Well, I must say, I didn’t believe a word of your story the other day, I thought you were spinning me a yarn.’

  ‘You’ve found evidence?’ Flint stopped walking outside a kafenon doorway.

  ‘Not exactly, but I found a sort of absence of evidence, know what I mean?’

  ‘We call it negative evidence in the trade.’

  ‘I found your woman at the Ministry of Culture and she confirmed that your professor telephoned her, as did a couple of his friends. Do Doctors Ennismore and Dracopoulos mean anything to you?’

  Flint nodded, keeping his excitement hidden. Doctor D. had denied knowing about Embury’s problem. The tag ‘culprit’ stuck to him firmer than ever.

  ‘Next, I called on a few friends, you know, in law, in business, in government. I had my own theory, you see; land speculation. There’s a lot of it going on and your Korifi company are the sort that are making the big Drachmas. Archaeologists and speculators never get along, do they?’

  ‘Like bootleggers and revenue men.’

  ‘Well, I found out that there are no planning disputes near your site: it’s the middle of nowhere, it’s not the kind of place anyone would want to build anything, is it?’

  Not apart from Lisa, thought Flint.

  Owlett had an odd, conspiratorial look. ‘The day after I spoke with the Culture woman, an old friend called and asked me out to dinner. It was a nice restaurant, he paid, which was even better. You’ll never guess what we talked about? You. He knew more about you than I did.’

  The day was going to be hot. Flint’s armpits stuck to his unwashed shirt, but now a creeping tingle tiptoed its way up his spine and took hold in a crown around his scalp.

  ‘Do you know who he works for? The Ministry of the Interior. You’ve touched a nerve — I don’t think they like what the editors in London did to my article. The Greeks are very sensitive about scandals, they’re still shaking off the image of being corrupt and repressive they gained in the seventies.’

  ‘So we’re getting close to something?’

  ‘You’re getting close, kiddo.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean this is too hot for me; they know I met you. I’m out on my ears if I start airing dirty laundry the natives want hidden. Reading between the lines, that article nearly cost me my press card. Don’t be ungrateful. I’ve done what I can.’

  ‘Shit!’ Flint kicked an abandoned Coke can viciously and sent it rattling into the gutter, then gazed around the square, angry and even frightened.

  Owlett took out his cigarette packet and pretended to ignore the burst of temper.

  ‘Okay, Hugh, bow out if you must, but you might receive the odd phone call.’ A piece of paper changed hands. ‘I put this small ad. in all the newspapers I could think of.’

  Owlett read the appeal for information. ‘Byron Nichols? You told me he was irrelevant.’

  ‘I was wrong. He was here during the war and he’s a real Hellenophile, so might still be living here.’

  ‘That’s my phone number!’ Owlett had noticed the bottom line.

  ‘I don’t have a phone — and you want a story.’

  ‘Bloody liberty!’

  ‘I rang the Consulate too — they will be getting back to you. Oh, and a couple of friends from the Oxford Institute are grubbing around, so expect a call in a day or so. Nichols was an Oxford Don; they tend to return to roost.’

  Owlett took a long, lung-scouring drag on his cigarette, turning slightly green at the news. From under his arm, he produced an A5 padded envelope marked for J.S. Flint, care of Hugh Owlett. ‘This is for you. It came in the post this morning. Vikki said I should stand back when you open it.’

  Flint looked at the parcel. At one time, people had adopted a habit of sending him unwelcome parts of animals — and worse — by first class mail. He sniffed the envelope, detecting no offal, excrement or naptha. A fingernail slit it open, and he withdrew a familiar burgundy passport.

  ‘Someone is giving you a hint.’

  So that was why he had escaped so easily: he was supposed to run, as he had seven years before. He gripped the passport tightly and for a moment he was tempted to go home, take stock and address the problem anew. Then he realised that the police might be relying on him taking the hint; the hunt had been called off in the hope he would simply melt away.

  Owlett’s eyes flicked away for just an instant. On impulse, Flint looked towards the figure who had captured the journalist’s attention. To say the man was smoking was as unnecessary as to say he was Greek. He loitered some sixty feet or so away and behind, but was too casual, too nonchalant and too interested to ignore.

  ‘Were you followed?’ Flint hissed.

  ‘No one knew where I was going.’ Owlett retorted, not sounding sure of his ground.

  Dark and welcoming, the kafenon door beckoned. ‘In here, you can buy me lunch.’ Flint darted towards the door.

  ‘I haven’t got time!’ Owlet
t was left on the pavement, taking a few seconds to react and follow Flint.

  The place was small and packed. The figure had not yet followed them to the door.

  ‘Toilets!’ Flint implored of a youthful waiter, trying to remember the Greek words and making flushing motions with one hand. Owlett chimed in with a line of Greek and a nod of the head pointed the way. Flint darted towards the rear, pulling Owlett in his wake. Passing the open kitchen door, he spotted what he wanted; a back exit.

  ‘It’s okay, this is a speciality of mine,’ he said to Owlett, ‘Go in the loo and close two doors!’

  Owlett vanished into the noisome washroom. ‘There’s only one...’ came a muffled voice, but Flint was no longer there. He had dodged into the kitchen, smiling toothily at the man chopping peppers and slipped into the back yard with a strong sense of déjà vu. An eight foot wall stood before him, with a padlocked back gate, but a pile of crushed cardboard boxes could serve as a springboard. Running towards the wall he bounced up, grabbing at the crest with both hands, scraping both arms. One leg was up, then the next and he was down into the shadowed alley that ran between two cliffs of concrete. He covered the hundred yards to its end at Olympic qualifying speed, almost falling into a taxi ordered by his protecting deity. He was still free; free to discover the enormity of the task facing him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Athenian taxis are cheap, but driving halfway out of town snapped a hole in the modest sum remaining from Vikki’s five hundred pounds. There would be no more escapes, Flint was certain. Memories of the odd looks he had received in past days haunted his journey. The hands of a conspiracy could be seen grasping at him, closing in. His new appearance and his alias would now be known; Athens was no longer safe.

  When the taxi driver stopped to pick up a second passenger, Flint stepped out, parting with the fare as if money were blood. Aware of watching eyes, wondering where the hell he was, Flint loitered until the taxi moved away, then hailed another. This delivered him directly into the compound of the British School, where he asked it to wait. He bolted inside to be rebuked by a stern female voice stabbing him from behind.